(The following story by Montanette Murphy appeared on the Utica Observer-Dispatch website on May 25, 2009.)
TABERG, N.Y. — Joseph Boardman was a young boy in Taberg when he watched a Greyhound bus roll along Route 69.
“I didn’t see people on the bus and I thought, ‘What the heck are they doing up here? There’s no one to pick up in Taberg,’” he recalled.
Boardman’s father helped to change his young son’s perspective. He told Boardman, who at the time was about 12 or 13, how crucial it is to have transportation.
“My dad said it was important, and I realized in my own mind that he had a better sense of it than I did,” Boardman said. “And that’s where the interest began.”
That interest got Boardman on the road, figuratively and literally, with his career in transportation. Today, Boardman, 60, is the president and chief operating officer of Amtrak.
The government-owned corporation was started in May 1971 to provide national inter-city passenger train service and today employs nearly 19,000 people. It operates on 21,000 miles of railroad track that connects 500 destinations in 46 states.
It’s a lofty position — and one that took a long journey to achieve.
On the way to Amtrak
Boardman began what would be a long transportation career simply — by driving a bus while attending Cornell University.
After that, he began working for the city of Rome in 1975, and then in 1980 managed the Rome and Utica transit authorities, he said.
For some time, he worked in Broome County as the commissioner of transportation services, then in 1995, he started a company called Progressive Transportation Services.
Later, he served as commissioner of transportation for former Gov. George Pataki, and was the longest-serving commissioner of transportation. Boardman occupied that position until 2005, he said.
Prior to becoming Amtrak president, Boardman was a member of the Amtrak board of directors and had served as the U.S. federal railroad administrator, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, since 2005.
What the community says
Steven DiMeo, president of economic development agency Mohawk Valley EDGE, said Boardman would likely see construction of a high-speed rail system as a positive move.
“I always found him to be a good person to work with, so I’d think he’d have a positive view of the proposal,” DiMeo said.
State Assemblywoman RoAnn Destito, D-Rome, said Boardman loves his community.
“I think he feels very strongly about his own community, and he was saying on several occasions in his speech ‘Don’t give up on Rome,’” Destito said, referring to Boardman’s May 18 speech at the Rome Chamber of Commerce’s annual breakfast meeting.
Bill Boardman describes his brother as a diamond in the rough and a fantastic person.
“We were eight kids on a farm, and he couldn’t wait to get away from the farm,” Bill said. “He was my hero when I was a little kid, my brother. He is a very, very loving family person.”